Pellucid
by Neleothesze
Summary: Take out the romance, the rose-tinted glasses. A jaunt to Middle-Earth would likely be part ordeal, part nightmare. (no pairing, OC friendships, begins TA 2992, between the events in the Hobbit and the LotR trilogy) Master Tolkien's work is considered unwritten. (there will be no foreknowledge of places, events or Arda's bestiary)
1. Chapter 1

_Pellucid_:

1. Translucently clear

2. Easily understood

**Table of Contents**

**Part I:** Chapters 1-4: Alice

**Part II**: Chapters 5-8: Yariv

**Part III**: Chapters 9-12: Anghen

* * *

**Part I _Alice_**

**Chapter 1: Inaction is a Weapon of Mass Destruction**

**AD 2013, early March**

A heavy fog blanketed the sidewalk, muffling the droning sound of countless tires. Although it sat close to the commercial centre of the bustling city, the tall apartment building on the corner of the street felt curiously lonely, its windows and balconies mere smudges in the gloomy haze. It was a terribly depressing sight. Only the rows of white and burgundy lights advancing slowly but relentlessly in their lanes, almost akin to a torch-carrying army of old, testified to the city's restlessness even on such a dreary spring afternoon. Few people had braved the weather on foot, the city's pigeon and sparrow population was nowhere to be seen and due to a late frost the trees lining the sidewalk had yet to bloom. With their viciously-chopped branches - to protect the electric cables some metres above - they were like savage milestones marking the length of the avenue.

Trudging along the wet sidewalk with her arms full of groceries Alice silently counted the breaths of cold air she had to take until she would be safe inside. Almost detachedly she noted that sometime in the last half-decade leaving the house had become an unwelcome chore.

The days spent indoors during university had turned to weeks after graduation when she discovered the wonders of being a home-based software developer and later to months as she embraced the more sedate activities of motherhood, passing baby-walking responsibilities to one or other of the many willing relatives. With cable television, a high-speed internet connection, not to mention an active two year old son, there was more than enough entertainment to be had indoors and Raul, still madly in love, was amused by his wife's whims and offered to take over most of the chores that required leaving their home.

Sheltered and quite a bit spoiled, Alice was quick to agree to the arrangement and, as the years passed, she became a sort of modern recluse: well informed of the happenings of the outside world - and wasn't the hostage situation in Alabama just terrible she'd say to a friend on Skype - but removed from it. As the joke went, Alice was more likely to Google the weather than to step outside on the balcony. Nowadays, when the need arose to interact with shopkeepers, taxi drivers, pharmacists or the like, Alice behaved with an almost childlike reticence. And today, even dressed in a yellow wool coat, as she listlessly walked back to the apartment, she looked nothing if not another fake torch lumbering in the fog.

For her part, Alice was completely focused on flexing her pained and whitening fingers around the grocery bags. Her father-in-law had called to let her know they'd be dropping by to visit their favourite - and likely '_only_' if her husband had his way - grandson. She had rushed out to buy everything necessary for a nice meal with the in-laws. A couple of exacting business-people, the elder Zoras had clear ideas about how Things Should Be Done, be it work, leisure or family life and it had become a point of pride to her to show as few faults as possible when they came to visit.

Absorbed as she was in returning some circulation to her fingers Alice failed to see the low-hanging branch stretching across her path like a beggar's hand and which caught her beanie and deftly snatched it upwards. She might have seen the humor in trying to retrieve the hat with her mouth while balancing six full bags if not for the grim cast the weather had thrown on the city. As it was, her back ached, her arms ached, her fingers were numb and, even stretched on her toes, her mouth was still a few centimeters too low.

If anything, Alice felt like a cervically-challenged giraffe: with her hands dragged down by the heavy weight of water bottles, potatoes, oranges and various other fruit and vegetables and neck extended as much as possible she still failed to reach the juicy leaves i.e. her missing beanie. When, moments later, two elderly ladies happened to pass by, they didn't fail to remark - in whispered voices just a touch too loud - how childish, ridiculous and ultimately futile her actions were. Embarrassed and silently cursing gossipy old women in general and her own inattentiveness in particular, Alice reluctantly propped three of the bags on a muddy but slightly straight patch of grass under the tree. A rebel leek slowly tilted the bag until it fell onto the grass, starting a minor cascade of fruit. Muffling a disgruntled sigh she grabbed the hat with her now free hand, stuffed it back on her head with no care for appearances and worked on redistributing the dirty groceries; she was still some fifty meters away from the apartment building and the leek had already proven its anarchist nature.

When she finally managed to make her way inside the apartment, she spared a quick greeting to her godmother who had kindly agreed to watch over Marc while she was gone - and was apparently having great fun splashing water with her son in the bathroom - before collapsing on the entry sofa.

'_It's just for a couple of minutes_.' she thought '_and then I'll drop the bags, clothes, wash up and start dinner._'

Having decided on that short break, she laid back and closed her eyes. From the living-room she could hear Bear Grylls talk about efficient methods of climbing a waterfall without ropes.

'_At least she remembered to switch on the show. I wonder when anyone would actually want to climb a waterfall... maybe if there are alligators in the lower pool... or jungle cats nearby. I wonder if cats can climb on vines._' and on that thought, she fell asleep.

(i)

There are many allegedly foolproof techniques for achieving lucid dreaming. Alice had read about quite a few of them, scoffed at plenty and tried about two. Clearing her mind or focusing on a certain body part had never worked so she was at a loss when she felt herself jerked awake, opened her eyes and encountered nothing. Still dressed in her yellow wool jacket and clutching the thrice-damned plastic bags, she stared at the world and the world was empty save for herself.

It has been said many times that the human mind is not very well equipped to deal with things outside its understanding so Alice's confusion - which was quite rapidly giving way to panic - was perhaps understandable. Moreso if we are let into the secret that one of the things she found most frightening while growing up was the Nothing in Michael Ende's Neverending Story.

Shutting her eyes tightly, Alice quickly went through every prayer she remembered, beseeching any and all Powers That Be that she be allowed to wake up. Instead, she felt a soft but commanding voice urging her to sleep. '_If voices entered the brain without help from the ears. Which of course they'd have to here_' she thought as a hysterical laugh threatened to escape her quivering lips '_since sound doesn't travel in the void... and isn't this the perfect moment to see physics laws contested._' Nevertheless, the voice patiently urged her sleep, coaxed her with promises of wonderful dreams, enticed her with stories about mythical creatures and eventually, eyes still closed against the void, Alice relaxed enough to fall asleep.

(ii)

**TA 2992, early March**

What may have been an eternity or a moment later, Alice yawned, opened her eyes again and stretched to relieve some of the pain in her back. She welcomed the pain, because pain was real and grounding, but the waking world, or what passed for it, again failed to impress. Or rather tried very hard to impress but, by refusing to condense into her warm fourth-floor apartment, still left Alice struggling with an anxiety attack and bile rising in her throat.

'_Pull yourself together__, Alice. Your first experience with lucid dreaming and you want to spoil it with the smell and taste of vomit._' she hissed between chattering teeth.

Her comfortable entry sofa had been replaced by short, dew-covered grass, her whole apartment by a foggy moor. A few boulders peppered the hillside and she sat not far from what looked like a particularly stubborn dog rose shrub, but aside from herself and her six intensely-coloured grocery bags in there was no sign of civilization. As crisp as the air had felt outside the apartment, it was nothing compared to how clean and bracing it felt now and from the little she could see through the fog, which was not very far at all, it put her in mind of the moors of Glen Affric she had seen a decade past. As she focused on calming down, she marveled at this apparently great feat of recollection. As rugged and untamed as nature had felt ten years ago in Northern Scotland, so it appeared today: rough, unspoiled, eerie in its timelessness and frightening in its detail.

Crouching next to the nearest boulder, Alice lightly ran a finger over its small ridges and valleys and admired the intricacy of its coarse texture. The old stone looked weather-beaten and ancient and Alice felt another stirring of unease.

'_What if_' she asked herself '_lucid dreaming isn't unlike the dreams from Inception? What if I have to die or fall from some height to wake up?_' Neither option sounded particularly appealing, especially since her back still ached merely from having slept on the hard ground. '_I think a test is in order_' Alice thought, inner voice mimicking an old university professor '_Let's see how far my powers extend over this dream before I leap off any cliff._'

And so, for the next couple of hours, Alice played Jedi.

(iii)

next up: **Chapter 2: You're my creative team, create a reason to get rid of her. Or I'll create a new creative team**

**Please review if you have the time, but as this is my first Lord of the Rings fanfic, please be gentle.**


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I found this chapter incredibly hard to write. I wanted to show how difficult it is for a non-initiate to live in the wilderness but do it without turning this story into a survival/horror tale. I don't know if I've succeeded but I'm done tinkering with it.

in reply to quaff: "_I like that Alice brought the groceries to ME. So many people could be helped if they were better prepared. ;)_"

Well, seeing as she won't be rescued by any traveling elves, rangers or wizards, nor is she close to civilization, if the Powers That Be had sent her empty-handed, it would have been a very short trip with a very painful ending ;) It would have added quite a bit of realism but shortened the story considerably. :D Such thoughtful people, these Powers That Be. :P

**Previously**: " '_I think a test is in order_' Alice thought, inner voice mimicking an old university professor '_Let's see how far my powers extend over this dream before I leap off any cliff_.'

And so, for the next couple of hours, Alice played Jedi."

**Chapter 2: You're my creative team, create a reason to get rid of her. Or I'll create a new creative team**

It would bore the reader and severely embarrass the main character to detail the many, varied ways in which Alice Zora attempted to master herself and the environment. Suffice to say that, by the time the sun had set and the cool March night alighted with a penetrating chill, Alice had resigned herself to having no more control over this thoroughly bewildering setting than she had over the waking world.

As the land around her settled to sleep, Alice sat down to analyze the situation. Plans were made, changed and adapted as the woman realized that she had to contend with the very grim prospect of her new found world behaving in all respects like the last one, including the hazard of contaminated food and water, the high probability of illness and disease and the finality of death.

Many of her groceries would spoil outside a fridge in a matter of days but, more pressingly, her water would last no more than a week, so she had a clear time-frame for reaching civilization or, at the very least, a clear-looking stream.

It was on this thought that a subdued looking Alice gathered her earthly possessions and, by the light of the moon, set to climbing the hill. A vantage point was needed to assess the direction she should take come morning.

(i)

That night, Alice tossed and turned on the hard ground and slept barely a wink. In her tired mind a myriad thoughts fought for supremacy: panicked thoughts of a lonely death, half-formed ideas of having actually left her home instead of fallen into a coma-like sleep, silent pleas for the gods to keep her son and husband safe in her absence, all interspersed with seemingly endless lists of things she needed and lacked.

At the break of dawn, even before the sun's pale rays hit her lonely hill, Alice had given up on sleep and started walking north by north east, towards the glinting line she had spied during breakfast. Any river, she reasoned, if followed for a sufficient distance, would yield either a smaller, cleaner affluent or civilization.

The journey towards the glittering river was by no means a short or easy one. In her quest for running water, Alice forced her aching feet up rocky hillsides and through slippery glens, the chosen route devoid of roads, paths or trails. Perhaps surrounded by family or friends the austere, unblemished beauty of the countryside would have moved her but, lonely and afraid, she felt no sense of kinship with this land.

Slowly, as Alice's supplies dwindled and she began to feel the weight of solitude press down on her already battered spirits, the woman realized she needed an outlet. From the fourth day onward - when the remaining bags could be carried over her wrists and forearms with little pain - Alice took to braiding strands of the short, vigorous grass that covered the moors. When she was thinking of her family she'd absentmindedly braid thin, delicate ropes like finespun green necklaces and later, when her thoughts would invariably return to her current predicament, she'd make rough, heavy ones, twenty strands knotted together with furious strokes, trailing chains of dying grass that she then hooked over her shoulders like mock nooses.

By the start of the second week of travel Alice was down to eating a carrot a day and whatever grubs could be found under the boulders while clutching tightly at her hidden treasure, three kilograms of potatoes, to be planted once she'd find a home.

(ii)

Nine days after she had decided to go north towards the promised water, the landscape started to change. The rocky moors made way for lush fields of riverside grassland. Alice could have wept with relief at spotting young dandelions, blooming chicory and growing shoots of curled dock. Walking on a full stomach, she made the rest of the journey to the river with a spring in her step.

Her first meeting with running water was a bitter disappointment. Just as she was squatting to fill an empty bottle, Alice recoiled in disgust.

Some things, she thought, a herd of dead deer perhaps, had fouled the water. Strips of blackened flesh hung limply between some stones, deep enough to have escaped the feasting of the crows but close enough to the water's surface that, to Alice, they appeared like grotesque banners warning of a spreading plague.

Swallowing the rising bile, Alice swiftly grabbed her belongings and started walking upstream. There was only half a bottle of water left but, as the sun slowly set in the west, Alice discovered the the source of the contaminated water.

Blackened, bloated, savaged carcases of hideously-deformed men littered both riverbanks. Peppered with broken arrows, flesh rent and limbs mangled, their remains were only vaguely human-shaped. It seemed not even carrion wanted to pick at the corpses, so befouled they were. '_What sort of chemical weapons could do this to a man?_' Alice asked, staring in horrified fascination at the scene of the carnage.

(iii)

Steering well away from the dead, Alice forced herself to trudge on, stopping only when the night sky clouded, greedily swallowing all moonlight and burying the land in an impenetrable dark. Huddled against the trunk of an old willow, Alice tried to sleep but her dreams, like slaves to the darkness around her, warped the happy memories of home until her family were the dead men in the river, the rooms were grottoes made from smooth river boulders where filthy water gurgled from some hidden taps, soon to swallow the house in a sea of rot.

Morning found Alice bone-tired and bleary-eyed. Her movements were slow and clumsy, her mind stuck in a blank. Dreading the morning's self-imposed march as much as she wanted to find a sanctuary, Alice decided to risk a wash. Armed with a handful of sand in lieu of sponge and soap, she rubbed and rinsed until she could hardly feel her fingers.

The feeling of moderate cleanliness did much to restore her spirits. She may have been stranded in a strange dream, Alice mused, but so far her decisions had proven sensible and her instincts true. She was somewhat hungry but not starving, dirty but not filthy, she had eight liters of clean river water, three kilos of potatoes for planting and a plan to build a shelter as soon as the river met some more robust vegetation. Her woolen jacket had protected her well enough against the wet fog but it would stand no chance against a downpour. That is where the plastic shopping bags would prove useful.

Her mind teeming with ideas, Alice followed the river with a renewed sense of purpose. The perfect spot, it needs be said, took two more days to find. The river had shifted closer and closer to a deep and forbidding woodland while the forest itself crept down the sloping hills, to rest within a stone's throw from the sandy banks. The ancient-looking trees, rising some fifty meters off the ground, loomed over the water and seemed to hold guard over a riverside grove, a tiny copse of willows.

In one of the willows' boughs Alice decided to craft a nest. The willow's thick trunk and branches were almost completely hidden behind a curtain of hanging withes. From some of these, some twigs and knotted grass ropes she fashioned, over a couple of days, a small but sturdy hammock. Her black plastic bags, carefully ripped at the seams, had been stitched together with braided grass to provide the bed with a waterproof canopy.

Late March turned into April and, tackling the issue of food with growing confidence, Alice learned to make fire with river stones and dried tree fungi, crafted rudimentary fish traps from willow withes and planted her potatoes in a roughly tiled patch of dirt. The treasured bulbs didn't rot - in no small part due to the magic of the land - and in a couple of months' time, Alice would see small shoots break the cover of the earth.

With the pressing issues of food and shelter solved to the best of her ability, the woman slowly started to explore the neighboring woods in search of berries and nuts.

In her first forays she stayed within sight of the river but, as she mapped more and more of the forest in her mind, she ventured deeper and deeper into the woods. Less than a month after her arrival at the forest edge, her carefree wanderings caught the attention of an elven scouting party.

The head of said scouting party was a dour elf named Anghen who - had it not been an ugly and decidedly un-elven motion - would have curled his lip in disgust at crazy human's antics.

These antics were Alice's valiant yet mostly unsuccessful attempts at tree-climbing, animal tracking, bow and spear making and trap-setting. Perhaps they would not have bothered the elven warrior to such a degree, had they not been joined by the lonely woman's running commentary and occasional bursts of song, bouts of tears, streams of curses, angry grunts, grumblings and screams.

In her ongoing fight against solitude, Alice earned the contempt of most of the hidden elves. She couldn't even begin to compare to the Rangers of the north with her ignorance of forest plants and her inability to keep quiet. They might have thought her a lost trader but her actions betrayed her intent to settle down instead of merely passing through the elven wood.

For the elven scouts, with their honed senses, perfect awareness of their surroundings and their symbiosis with the natural environment, Alice's attempts were more aggravating than amusing and she herself was like a stupid child playing where it was unwanted. As watchers of the forest they had gained an unwelcome tenant who contributed to the well-being of neither the land nor the elves but would still need to be protected, according to honor, against the menace of spiders and orcs.

next up: **Chapter 3: To the optimist, the glass is half-full; to the pessimist, it is half-empty. To the engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be**

**Important AN:** Since two readers have already asked about Alice's apparent lack of reaction to having been tossed into a strange place, I will make a note of it here. The starting part: "[_it would_] severely embarrass the main character to detail the many, varied ways in which** Alice Zora attempted to master herself** and the environment" refers to Alice going through the 5 stages of grief. Since there were many better written stories dealing with the trauma of getting snatched out of one's reality, the particular manifestations of her grief were left to the reader's imagination. :)

* * *

AN1: Thankfully, Alice's first encounter was with dead orcs and not living ones.

AN2: For anyone interested in the geographical aspect of the journey, Alice traveled towards the Celduin, close to the confluence with the Carnen, and then upstream towards Mirkwood. She stopped to build her home not a few kilometers away from the Old Forest Road, where the forest creeps close to the waterside.

AN3: Why potatoes? Because it's the only veggie in the grocery bag that can be grown from itself and not from seeds. Also, chicory is a wonderful plant. It has a great concentration of antioxidants and you can use almost any part of it. You can make tea from its leaves and flowers, use the leaves as seasoning or bake the roots. Some people still drink coffee made from ground chicory roots.


	3. Chapter 3

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed, followed or simply read this story. It might be cathartic to write, but it's a real pleasure to see others enjoying the work.

**Previously**: "For the elven scouts, with their honed senses, perfect awareness of their surroundings and their symbiosis with the natural environment, Alice's attempts were more aggravating than amusing and she herself was like a stupid child playing where it was unwanted. As watchers of the forest they had gained an unwelcome tenant who contributed to the well-being of neither the land nor the elves but would still need to be protected, according to honor, against the menace of spiders and orcs."

* * *

**Chapter 3: To the optimist, the glass is half-full; to the pessimist, it is half-empty. To the engineer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be**

Before the shadow of evil had fallen on the dense forests north of Dol Guldur, Greenwood the Great had been a place of wonder. Vast stretches of untamed woodland cocooned, like loving mothers, treasures of nature so hauntingly beautiful to be akin to shards of divinity forgotten by the Valar. Here, those Eldar who traveled along the hidden paths of the wood found babbling creeks carrying for miles the low tune of the earth. The strains of the water's song would be little more than whispers on the wind until the creeks' careful journeys along the seams of the land, past rows of majestic oaks, beeches and maples had them meeting brothers and sisters in song, fast-running brooks and slow gurgling streams.

In certain, secret parts of the forest these wandering creeks would daringly jump from up high, emerging as sparkling waterfalls that shouted their joy in dancing curtains of soft, shining droplets before diving into lily-covered pools. Inside these places of marvel the water's soothing murmur would provide a beautiful counterpoint to the forest's gentle rustling of leaves and the soft scuttling of critters in the underbrush. Here, sun streaked glades covered in wildflowers invited one to meditate on the perfection of Eru's creation, surrounded by the subtle aroma of oak, maple and lush grasses and the heady perfume of a thousand blooms.

In this paradise the Silvan elves had seen fit to settle, to worship with their presence and protect with their lives. And it was this heavenly land that, in the first millennium of the Third Era, first grew tainted by the vileness of Sauron's evil.

As Sauron started to amass his own power, the evil grew like a disease, smearing its shame on the land and filling the earth with its corruption. The towering oaks grew dark and crooked, their canopies meshing together to hide the understory from the rule of the sun. Ever so slowly the shadows seeped north. The grass grew thorny, the flowers' fumes soporific, the critters large, twisted and vicious as Sauron's pollution warped the beautiful song of creation much like his master Melkor's had done, ages prior.

Fighting a losing battle against the encroaching darkness, the elves were slowly driven north. But the Eldar's devotion to their home didn't waver in the face of danger and darkness. From their sanctuary in the mountains two companies of border guards would set southwards - six for the eastern border and six for the west -, flitting like shades through the tree branches, killing as many abominations as they encountered across the nearly two thousand leagues of forested land and keeping watch for traces of orcs and other evil spawn. This routine would span across millennia.

Of the original border guards - scouts who had taken on this duty after the elves' retreat beyond the northern mountains - only two were still living, Anghen and Dorn, two brothers wholly unlike one another. Though their family bonds and duty had kept them in close company for most of their lives, the two elves had vastly differing world views.

Dorn, the younger of the two, treated Sauron's evil as a provocation, a challenge to be accepted and won. It was his firm belief that when the world conspired against you, you had to make your own hope and take comfort in whatever victories you reaped, paltry though they may seem; that to view life as an ongoing struggle against insurmountable odds was to doom yourself to a bleak existence as tragic as a life under the rule of darkness.

So Dorn annexed to his life as a warrior a never-ending search for novelty, for the beauty and thrill found in all new things. His hands would battle with bow and dagger while his mind fought with humor and whimsy. Often he could be heard whispering cheerful, uplifting tunes while retrieving arrows from a foe's remains. To his companions he appeared as a childish elf, both curious and capricious. He would find beauty, admire it wholeheartedly and then dismiss it before it had time to wither and taint his happiness. In all things he would pour his heart but few held sway over it, the precious few that had earned not just his attention but also his devotion. For his wife - one of the few constants allowed by his fickle nature - Dorn would whittle intricate trinkets, craft beautiful necklaces of colorful pebbles and string, fill handmade leather satchels with rare, fragrant leaves; all presents forgotten as soon as they were gifted. At times, the memory of her smiles would linger for a few days, before Dorn's attention would be caught by another small, novel thing.

His brother's light-hearted manner was something Anghen silently envied, for he himself had never mastered the art of separating his heart from whatever sorrow it beheld. During his first century as a warrior he had felt only confusion, for how could any sort of taint prevail against the dominion of the elves; then fear, because the enemy was relentless and his servants were legion. From centuries of fighting against the darkness Anghen eventually developed a deep hatred of all outsiders.

He was, to his great sorrow, familiar with both aspects of evil, the blatantly hideous evil of orcs, wargs and the brood of Shelob as well as the subtler but no less threatening evil of man. In recent years mercenaries from the human tribes of the east had sworn themselves to the fallen Maia, their service bought with gold and sealed with the blood of the Eldar. Whereas Dorn could still find enjoyment in the music of life, Anghen's heart and mind were filled only with the burning desire of preserving the heritage of the Silvan elves and scorn for those unable or unwilling to do so.

(i)

One such useless creature was the wildling who had taken to wandering in their woods. Alice, for she was currently the target of Anghen's contempt, had found some measure of security in the wilds. While she couldn't spend her days in idleness as she would have liked, life had settled into a routine that was both familiar and soothing. For more than half a decade she had been content to live her life in the comfort of her home - the world's complexity reduced to that of work and family - and after the harrowing journey to the forest edge she had clung to the safety of a dwelling of any sort.

But by the start of April she no longer had the excuse of tending to her primary needs. Designing and building game traps had taken the place of building a shelter, tree-climbing and foraging had replaced making fire and catching fish, but all this was busywork meant to keep her mind off a problem Alice had no wish to confront: whatever weapon had killed the misshapen men downriver could possibly reach her new home as well; if it was biological, the surrounding wildlife could already have been affected.

The woman was well aware that she should, quite probably soon, renew her attempts at finding civilization but she had bred inaction into her system - the same way others breed assertiveness and resolution - with such cold, calculated care that she often viewed decision making not as a fundamental right but as a necessary evil, one to be delayed as much as possible. To her good fortune, the delays were almost always clothed in the shape of an analysis of the situation, which proved as useful in the wilderness as it had in the world of programming.

Therefore 'soon' took a couple of weeks of mental preparation and gathering of all necessary provisions. A hat was weaved as was a basket for food, clothes were washed, a walking stick cut and dried, the tree-bed's plastic canopy converted into a billowing cloak; fish and berries were dried and packed together with nuts and baked chicory roots, water bottles filled and then, with packs full, Alice set out, like a morose version of Robinson Crusoe, to find the limits of her prison/kingdom.

(ii)

Week-long trips north and west revealed no traces of human life but northwards she was forced to stop before a burnt plain and the westwards journey revealed something as alarming as it was hideous, the carcass of a giant spider. The gruesome sight had her rooted to the spot.

'_What sort of radiation levels could cause arachnids to grow to such a size?_' Alice wondered in dismay. '_Why weren't the plants affected?_' would be her very next thought, swiftly followed by '_I could actually die of cancer in this strange place!_'

As damaging for her composure as the sight of the spider may have been, Alice eventually gathered her wits enough to note that the spider was peppered with broken arrows, just as the corpses in the river had been. She fearfully wondered if the army had chosen this site for their military experiments precisely because the locals were so out of touch with technology.

Perhaps the people had taken to the woods in some vain hope of escaping the fallout. The more she dwelt on the idea, the less far-fetched it seemed until it was clear to Alice that the locals had no idea how radiation contamination even worked, that the local government was performing unspeakable and unforgivable acts of atrocity in this region and that she would likely die within a year of thyroid cancer. Her dark thoughts wouldn't lift for a fortnight and when they did, it was to make way for an even more pervasive feeling of despair.

On the journey east she witnessed from afar as three armored men executed a fugitive by first running him down on horses and then beheading him with a sword. Their laughter was the last thing she heard and even in this the gods granted her a small mercy for, when she fainted, the tall grass covered her fall and the men were none the wiser about anyone having witnessed to their savage act. Hours later, when Alice stirred and recalled the horrifying events, she broke down in terrified, anguished cries.

Military experiments were supposed to display man's inhumanity to man. A death as a casualty of nuclear radiation would have been long and drawn out and would have afforded her time to search for town with a phone and the possibility of medical treatment. Her husband would have transferred money and she would have been on the first flight home or at least would have found asylum at the local embassy until all bureaucratic issues were settled. With her family at her side she would have had the media up in arms, sued the state for medical bills, written a biography. Even in death she could have made a difference.

But against mail-decked soldiers, misshapen men and giant spiders she was defenseless; in a backwards land where people fought with bows and swords, she was powerless. Southwards lay endless hills and the very real probability of a war between some unknown locals and the misshapen men, westwards was the forest with its giant spider inhabitants and eastwards was the home of psychotic men who took pleasure in murder. For the second time in two months, Alice found herself struggling with grief.

When she at last arrived back at her shelter, pockets overflowing with filthy strips of coarse cloth and towing behind her a blood-spattered leather jerkin, a pair of dirty boots and a rusty sword she resolved to avoid venturing too far in any direction. She limited her time in the woods to foraging and, while inside the forest, she would often twitch at the smallest sounds.

**next up **Chapter 4: "I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid"

* * *

AN: The odds of ending up in ME in an area clear of danger from all directions are pretty slim. In Alice's case, the odds shriveled to none and then ran away to hide in embarrassment.

AN2: A jaunt to the past or a different world wouldn't be everyone's first thought. Poor Alice's overactive imagination led her to draw other conclusions, at least at first.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: **A monster of a chapter.

**Previously**: "When she at last arrived back at her shelter, towing behind her a blood-spattered leather jerkin, a pair of filthy boots and a rusty sword she resolved to avoid venturing too far in any direction. She limited her time in the woods to foraging and, while inside the forest, she would often twitch at the smallest sounds."

**Chapter 4: "I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, and in short, I was afraid"**

The young woman returned to her riverside dwelling in very low spirits, weary, scared and angry, like a lonely soldier whose routed army was followed by the winners and cut down even as they fled, a man who now feels cornered and trapped by a hateful foe. For whatever good it may have done, Alice took to wearing the dead man's armor and carrying his sword but even armed and armored she no longer ventured into the forest deep enough to lose sight of the river.

With her eyes opened to the true nature of the woods, she began to take notice of the many differences between Mirkwood and the woodlands back home. The farther one ventured inside the forest the more trees one could find embraced by thick, thorny vines. The old oaks' heavy trunks and overgrown roots would be peppered with large clusters of red and yellow mushrooms, sickly brown fungi and dark-coloured moss, hanging like ghastly adornments on the decrepit trees.

Here and there a critter would rush through the underbrush or take to the trees and though names could be assigned to the little beings to help the reader form an idea of their appearance, the shadow-touched creatures were not wholly alike their namesakes. An overgrown rabbit might be caught munching on some leaves but could also be found nosing at a dead rat, nibbling at the rotting remains with sharp, vicious teeth, behaving for all intents and purposes like a starving hedgehog, fox or wolf trapped in the body of a gentler being. A sweetly perfumed, rosy-hued wildflower would be surrounded by dozens of dead insects, their poisoned bodies already set upon by their brethren.

Having tried to stem her unease and failed, Alice would, increasingly often, let her feet carry her along the river banks instead of the dark woods. Though she still laid her traps and picked those herbs which had passed the edibility test, the woman felt a sense of foreboding. She fearfully thought that the forest would demand a tribute of its newest occupant, as it had of all the beings that lived within. Her fears would not prove unfounded.

(i)

May came with southern winds and the promise of heavy rains, but having no knowledge in reading the weather, Alice was woefully unprepared when, heralded by the strong wind, the storms washed in. She had found during one of her wanderings, in a meander some miles north of her dwelling, a small clay deposit. Heartened by the possibility of crafting some earthenware for storing food, boiling water or at least heating it for soups and herbal teas, Alice forgot to keep an eye on the sky and missed the distant rumble of thunder. When the skies opened and the storm poured its fury over the land, the young woman was caught miles outside her shelter dressed only in a flimsy blouse.

Following her first impulse to seek shelter under a nearby shrub was, in retrospect, the worst thing she could have done. The shrub's twisted branches held against the downpour for less than an hour after which she was soaked to the bone, cold and shivering. When night was close to falling and the rain hadn't abated in the least, Alice forced herself to trudge home where she could eat some of her meagre provisions and take shelter under the plastic cloak.

The wind was a ceaseless, pitiless force, flattening the tall riverside grasses and mercilessly whipping whatever saplings had sprung in earlier months, bending their young trunks almost to the ground in a parody of a bow. Forced to walk against the wind, buffeted by the unrelenting rain, feet caught in brambles and muddy grass, Alice slowly made her way south, to her little copse of willows.

By the time she reached her sanctuary, she had caught a severe cold. Morning found her huddled under the plastic canopy, aching and shivering. With her food stores emptied by the journeys undergone mere weeks ago and the inability to keep a fire going in the heavy rain, Alice returned to a diet of raw fish and wild plants. On the morn of the third day of constant rains she was feverish and had a deep, barking cough.

The onset of these distressing symptoms prompted a desperate relocation inside the ominous forest where Alice managed, at last, to keep a fire lit. The warmth and cooked food helped the woman keep enough strength to fight off the infection but also invited unwanted attention from the forest's more unfriendly creatures. Drawn by the warmth and the smell of fresh meat, a group of rat-sized spiderlings left their shelter and sought to prey on the injured human. Most forest critters were fast and wary of the forest's natural predators and it had been a long time since any of their brood had sampled still warm flesh. The temptation was impossible to resist and they trusted in their numbers if not the strength of their poison, for they were still young and their prey large enough to survive their bite.

Not two days after making camp inside the woods, Alice woke to piercing pain and found herself beset by nearly a dozen spiderlings. Grabbing a flaming branch and the rusted sword at her side she flailed her arms and legs, trying to burn or hit her attackers. But the spiders possessed an animal cunning, a base sort of intelligence, and when she lunged they scuttled back, only to swipe at her from behind. Time and time again she jabbed, thrust and slashed, pummeled and stomped. Felling one of their numbers didn't discourage the others and only after what seemed like an eternity of struggle, Alice fell to her knees, dizzy and coughing, surrounded by her defeated assailants.

She had managed to slaughter all of the filthy things but even in death they had each taken their pound of flesh, her arms and legs covered in poisonous bites. To the shivering, coughing and fever had been added cramps, vomiting and loose bowels as her body desperately fought both poison and virus. While awake Alice moved with great difficulty and indeed most of her efforts were spent in drinking enough water and merely keeping enough food down. To any and all deities she prayed, but if any heard her, they chose to merely stop the rains and left her mortal to tend to itself.

Even after the body purged itself of the spiderlings' poison, it took over two weeks for the worst cold symptoms to clear and, by the end of it all, Alice was left weakened, with a slight twitch in her left hand, an ugly cough and a hoarse voice. The poison from one of the spiderlings' bite had damaged a nerve and she could hardly control the tremors when she forced her fist closed.

With a desperate sort of determination to not die alone in the wilds, Alice prepared herself for another long trip - this one to last until she either met some gruesome end or found some sort of civilization. She smothered a rueful laugh when she thought of how terrified she had been at the sight of the giant spider pierced by arrows. What was the possible wrath of some unknown locals when compared to the very real and deadly threat of mindless beasts.

Armed with a walking stick to carry her weight and that of her pack, the woman collected everything she owned or had made, stuffed in as much food as she could gather or catch in a couple of days, as much water as fit into her old bottles and set forth, with the noon sun against her back. Of the four directions, each housing a different horror, the way of the burning plain seemed the most benign of choices. And so Alice trekked northwards.

(ii)

Around three hundred miles into their patrol route, Anghen saw his brother taken by an increasing alertness, his actions marred by a slight impatience, a certain carelessness of movement. He had his guesses as to what had caused the minute changes and, signaling to the other four elves to go ahead, reined his horse to fall in step with his younger brother.

"Have you sensed something we have yet to sense, brother, or is it the human's doing?" he asked bluntly, though his voice held no harshness and betrayed none of his disdain.

With a merry laugh, Dorn turned to face his elder sibling. "The wildling is intriguing." he admitted with an absent-minded shrug "When we make camp I will, by your leave, check up on the young thing."

"Your capriciousness does you no credit, Dorn." Anghen returned in a dispassionate voice. Turned as he was away from his brother, with his narrowed gaze fixed on the hurried climb of a dark haired squirrel, only the slight tenseness of his posture hinted at his disapproval. "We do not expose ourselves to humans to see whether they have learnt to whittle a stick."

"Oh, it can't whittle to save its life - not that I know of." was Dorn's facetious reply "But some of those traps fascinate me. They seem quite ingenious and I would be curious as to their efficiency... had the wildling enough sense to place them in the proper spots. Mayhap I will move one to where it would do some good - or bad, as the case may be."

"Such flights of fancy you indulge in, brother."

Dorn's curiosity would, however, end up unsatisfied as by the time they neared her former home, Alice had left in search of another.

(iii)

The journey took her past the frightening plains of burnt earth, through rolling hills of lush summer grasses dotted with gnarly wild-apple trees and dog-rose shrubs and by lightly forested uplands. Some ten days later, while unearthing some edible roots, she happened upon a narrow trail hidden in the deep grass, a trail no wider than foot, going west to east. Since west was the realm of monstrous spiders, the young of which had almost killed her, Alice turned east and, by noon the second day, she was within sight of a small shepherding village.

The dirt lane she was travelling on meandered past clustered orchards and vegetable patches, fading behind a clump of silverleaf poplars then bursting into view to cross a rickety bridge and strut into the village proper. The hamlet itself stood in the shadow of two hills, some two dozen clay houses covered with thatch, huddled around a small stream which curled around the base of the hills where a flock of sheep grazed in the sun.

With the prospect of integrating into a foreign society, she stopped to consider how she would present herself. Few societies throughout history had allowed women the same liberties as men and she shuddered to think that she'd end up married to some violent peasant, forced to work for him and please him in order to survive, when she'd already been blessed with a kind, indulgent husband.

If only she could present herself as a sort of travelling wise-woman, she mused some time later, as she munched on a sour and slightly battered apple. If she didn't fall foul of the local religion, she could even claim to be an old witch or healer of some sort. Though Alice was no doctor, she still remembered bits and pieces of old biology and anatomy lessons more than a decade past. With enough luck, she would be able to cure some minor ills and win the common folk's gratitude.

On the point of age, the woman needn't have worried. To spare her strength Alice leaned heavily on her walking stick as she walked. Drained by the two illnesses she had suffered, her face gone gaunt by sickness and a spartan diet in the wilds, she looked more wraith than woman. The roughened, hoarse voice, her matted hair and dirty clothes only added to the illusion of old age and weakness so the villagers greeted her as a frail old woman.

**TA 2998, late summer**

Six years had passed since her arrival and in the hillside hamlet Mistress Zora had found a place as the village healer.

The villagers had been impressed by her use of foreign languages even if they understood none of her words. Alice had asked, in as a commanding voice as she could muster, whether they could speak the language, going through the two she could speak fluently and then the two she had some knowledge of. It only took two gossipy old women quietly suggesting that mayhap the woman was a foreign wizard of some sort - for she seemed to know much and was plenty strange - for the word to spread, take roots and before long Alice found herself installed on a cot inside the headman's house. She didn't question her good fortune but rather, like any good charlatan, seized the opportunity when it presented itself and tried to maintain a mystical, knowledgeable air.

It took her two years to learn the locals' language but when they finally understood her advice, taken from her rudimentary knowledge of human biology and medicine, it helped the local midwife save the life of a new mother, an old shepherd's leg from amputation and a young man from a severe infection. The deeds strengthened her desire to research the local flora, trying to find various natural antibiotics, analgesics, antiseptics, anti-anxiety or anti-inflammatory herbs, nourishing, stimulating or tonifying plants, often taking hints from the old wives' herbal lore when mixing potions and poultices. The fact that she would be fooling the trusting village folk a bit less also appealed to her.

Her hut, built one spring with the aid and council of the helpful villagers, sat within sight of the village but was surrounded by a sizeable garden filled with medicinal plants. The one room was both kitchen, bedroom and laboratory, its every available surface covered with dried weeds, fungi and molds. In return for bread, butter, cheese and the occasional leg of mutton she mixed potions for healing and poisons against household pests, teas for soothing stomach pains, chest aches and insomnia.

It was another kind of isolation for though the villagers respected her talents, Alice could not completely open herself to any friendship, not when she had duped them for a great many years before her knowledge actually matched the image she presented. The children too often remarked that her talents were very alike to those of the of the fabled 'wood sprites' of the great western forest and she wondered at times if she would not have been better served by an image as an grieving widow. It might have earned her some companionship during the long winter nights.

next up, start of** Part II: _Yariv_**

**Chapter 5: To the praying mother and the worried father, let your children go**

* * *

**AN**: We all know chamomile can be used to treat stress and insomnia, that willow bark tea was the predecessor of aspirin or that some molds are natural antibiotics. With years to focus on plant lore, Alice rediscovered some of the old natural remedies. Even if the kids think it's magic, it's simple herbal medicine.

**AN2**: Even though someone may easily learn how to say 'I want food' or 'This is wet.' it takes years and years before they can learn specialty words like chronic bronchitis (which Alice is now suffering from) or words which describe something not immediately visible: how do you ask of an uneducated farmer the word for philosophy or economy? And what hardworking villager has time, other than late at night, to sit and discuss the differences between a bough, a branch and a twig, between a salmon and a trout?

A large vocabulary is, unfortunately, not something you can acquire in a year or two and I was loath to write dialogue for Alice as long as she was stuck with the vocabulary of a precocious 5 year old. A six year time frame gave her plenty of time to analyse the situation/land she fell into and also learn how to speak the local language properly.

In regards to Alice speaking two languages and having some knowledge of two more: in Europe, if you're not a native English speaker then it's almost a given that you know one foreign language and often two, especially if your native tongue is a neo-Latin/Romanic language and you're trying to learn another Romanic language (Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Romanian, etc), a North Germanic language and trying to learn another North Germanic language (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, etc) and so on. I happen to understand five, speak four and I'm not even a foreign languages student. It's nothing unusual and certainly no remarkable talent on the part of the protagonist. :)


End file.
